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The small team of employees at GoldieBlox isn't used to having a crew of
black limos pull up in front of its Oakland, Calif.-based
office. And the family-run toy business whose mission is to
encourage girls to embrace math, science and engineering
definitely isn't used to bright lights and camera
crews in its offices.

“My hair was a mess that day,” says Debbie Sterling, Goldieblox's
founder and CEO, remembering the day in early November when she
found out her company was a finalist in a competition hosted by
Intuit to win a Super Bowl commercial. The limos and camera crew
descending on the GoldieBlox office overwhelmed the intimate
staff. “It was like a SWAT team. We were completely caught off
guard.”

Bill Rancic, the entrepreneur and television personality who was
the first winner of The Apprentice a decade ago,
delivered the news. “Everyone in [Sterling's] office was crying.
They were so happy for her,” he says.

After a month of serious hustle to get her customers and fans to
vote for GoldieBlox, Sterling got a phone call in early December
from the Intuit team telling her that she had won
the grand prize. The 30-second ad spot costs more than $4
million alone, not to mention the production costs, which put
the total price tag at somewhere in the “double-digit
millions,” says Rancic.

Commercials in the Super Bowl are considered the
crème-de-la-crème of advertising. You can’t get a more coveted
spot of television time. And so, historically, the ad time has
been completely off limits to anyone other than the biggest
companies with the deepest pockets. Small businesses typically
have no shot whatsoever at buying ad time during the big game.

For Sterling, winning this spot is a dream come true. Like a true
social entrepreneur, she is especially
excited about what this will do for her cause.

“I know this is a huge win for our company, but it is a bigger
win for all the girls," she says. Sterling hopes it will inspire
parents and teachers to reexamine the values they pass down and
encourage them to show young girls something beyond the closet
full of princess toys. “That is the win – double-digit millions
behind that.”

The campaign from financial software company Intuit was born
about a year ago and solicited 16,000 small-business
applications. To be considered, a small business had to have less
than 50 employees and be located in the U.S. The 8,000 staffers
at Intuit voted the applicant pool down to a final four and then
a third-party put the final four small-business contestants out
to a vote from the American public. Millions voted.

In addition to GoldieBlox, the final four group of small
businesses in the competition included Durham, N.C.-based
dog-treat maker Barley Labs, Duluth, Minn.-based egg farm
Locally Laid, and a Nampa, Idaho-based
dairy compost company called POOP Natural Daily Compost.

Which, in a sense, was exactly the point of the Intuit program,
called Small Business Big Game. “At the end of
the day, the program is really all about shining a spotlight
and celebrating the 29 million small businesses we have in
America,” says Rancic. “In many cases, the small business
owner is the unsung hero. They are the ones rebuilding Main
Street.”

The GoldieBlox team, which was all of two employees a year ago,
is now 15 people, and is hiring by the week. Sterling envisions
GoldieBlox becoming a brand that extends to clothing, novels, an
animated series and a digital platform to teach young girls the
fundamental principles of engineering, math and science. “Think
about the Disney Princess franchise, where every part of a girl’s
life she can live like a princess. We would like to do the same
thing, but have her live like an inventor,” says Sterling.

In the meantime, Sterling and her team are ramping up production
to prepare for the anticipated post Super Bowl commercial rush of
interest. They sold out at Christmas and can’t produce toys fast
enough.

Just last week, GoldieBlox started selling in Target, a deal
Sterling credits to the publicity generated by the Intuit
contest. “Target is a pie-in-the-sky dream for us,” said
Sterling. “Just imagine, the average American family having this
be on the shelves of Target: the girl with the tool belt and her
overalls.”